Deciphering ancient artifacts with a lost language used by women in Zambia

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Curators at the National Museum of World Culture in Sweden recently invited a group of Zambian women to help understand the meaning of some ancient artifacts and the communities that used them. Samba Yonga, a co-founder of the virtual Women’s History Museum of Zambia, was one of them. She discussed the project with The World’s Host Carolyn Beeler. The post Deciphering ancient artifacts with a lost language used by women in Zambia appeared first on The World from PRX.

Geometric patterns on cloth. Symbols etched into sacred masks.

Experts believe it’s all part of an ancient, largely forgotten writing system that was used by women in Zambia.

Recently, the curators at the National Museum of World Culture in Stockholm, Sweden, invited a group of Zambian women to help understand the meanings of some artifacts and the communities that used them. The idea is that many of the objects in Sweden will eventually be brought back to the African continent.

Experts believe that geometric patterns and etched symbols on some ancient artifacts are part of a largely forgotten writing system used by women in Zambia.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin Tembo

The hope is for many of the ancient artifacts on display in Sweden to eventually be returned to the African continent.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin Tembo

Samba Yonga, the co-founder of the virtual Women’s History Museum of Zambia, was a part of the project. While she and her crew wait for the items to be returned, they plan to continue studying and deciphering the artifacts.

Yonga spoke to The World’s Carolyn Beeler about her work.

Carolyn Beeler: These writing systems were used mostly in the centuries before the colonial era in Africa. What have you and others been able to decipher about what the messages on the artifacts that you found actually are saying?

Samba Yonga: The communities lived very close to the earth and had knowledge and information about cosmology, their environment and the community. And they understood that you had to be in communication with these elements in order to have continuity of life. And in a lot of these communities, they were matrilineal, which means women were at the center of the communities. There were female kings, there were female leaders of communities, nation builders, custodians of the land, custodians of the food, as well.

Samba Yonga holds an image of the wooden hunter’s toolbox.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin Tembo

I’d love to have you describe some of the artifacts that we’re talking about here. The hunter’s toolbox. It’s so intricate-looking.

Yes, the hunter’s box was used when one of the elders or the community members or hunters would go hunting, and those symbols would be evoked before the hunter went hunting in order to protect them, in order for them to understand the process they’d have to go through.

Earlier I mentioned that there was a very close connection with the environment, and they understood that the trees and the animals were all part of the cycle of life. And they had to give respect and honor to the animals, to the trees, even if that’s where they got their source of food from.

So, that was a practice that was very embedded in the communities, and it was something that had to be practiced every single time a hunter went to hunt for food.

How did these items and photographs that are included in this collection end up in Sweden in the first place?

That’s one of the things that surprised me because when you think of Sweden and Scandinavia, you don’t think of them as colonizers, because they officially never colonized any country in Africa. So, when I got there and I was with the African curator, Michael Barrett, he then said to me, “Oh, you’re Zambian. You know, you should probably come and see the Zambia collection.” And I asked him, “Why do you have a Zambian collection?”

Because in my mind, it never connected that Sweden would ever have a collection. The UK, that makes sense. France, it makes sense. Belgium makes sense. Not Sweden. And he was like, “Oh, actually, what used to happen in those days is the Swedish and Scandinavians would book space in British voyagers’ ships going to the continent because they couldn’t afford ships themselves.” And that’s how they ended up on the continent.

So, I was like, “Oh, okay, we didn’t know that.”

So, that’s how these particular artifacts that we examined, like the cloak, like some of the Makishi masks, ended up in the museum.

European ethnographers collected copper artifacts over a century and a half ago, providing a trail of evidence into how Indigenous mining processes were managed and the objects were used.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin Tembo

Samba, I wonder if this has been emotional work for you?

Since we started the journey, it has been emotional, because we’ve been having these conversations around how, as Africans or as Zambians, we’ve had to shape-shift without even realizing that that’s what you’re doing. And the memory is not that far off. In order for my father to access education, he had to shape-shift and conform to a Eurocentric model of education, religion and living in order to be allowed into a school system, in order for him to get an education, so that he can earn a livelihood.

And that process actually resulted into a shape-shifting and a duality that a lot of Zambians and Africans still live, where you’re crossing in and out of this identity. So, part of the work that we are doing is trying to connect those two parts and trying to center our own Indigenous knowledge so it doesn’t feel like we have to discard it or shape-shift in order to conform. And that has been very emotional.

Mulenga Kapwepwe, author and co-founder of the Zambian Women’s History Museum, looks at one of 20 pristine leather cloaks in the Swedish archive collected during an expedition between 1911 and 1912.Courtesy of Raphael Sennin Tembo

So, this language that you have helped to document and decipher and teach people about, is an example of something that might have been forgotten because of forces, you know, making people adopt a more Western language learning style in order to advance.

Absolutely, the intention was to control, to obscure, remove and dominate. And the hegemony of this domination has continued on without an effort to restructure and reposition. And I think we have the responsibility to do that now, especially understanding what’s at stake for even the generations to come.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

The post Deciphering ancient artifacts with a lost language used by women in Zambia appeared first on The World from PRX.

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